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Looking at the Yellowduckmarine I can’t tell but in Dublin we have the Viking Splash Tour (http://www.vikingsplash.com/). The Dublin ones are actual WWII duck vehicles used in the Normandy landings (the instruction plans of theses ones arein French as they were given to the French army) – hence the “duckmarine” I would imagine?

Just listening to this episode. Sorry, but you are wrong about the definition of negative reinforcement. In behavioral psychology, negative reinforcement is essentially the same as punishment – it means delivering an aversive (unpleasant, unwanted) response to an undesired behavior in order to reduce or eliminate that behavior; positive reinforcement is delivering a pleasant response to desired behavior in order to increase its frequency. So aside from the other criticisms of the study on parapsychological phenomena that you cite, it does correctly use the term “negative reinforcement” (assuming, of course, that the test subjects don’t like electric shocks).

I’m pretty sure you’ve got that wrong. In operant conditioning, Negative Reinforcement is about the removal of an aversive stimulus in response to desired behaviour. This is different to Punishment, which is the application of an averse stimulus in response to undesired behaviour. What was happening in the zener card test was clearly the latter.

I caught the NY story with the reference to the study. But if I recall the study, therr was a slight difference between the two subjects, the woman in the study showed some slight, but not statistically significantly, difference in psychic ability and that the authors were looking for funding for a follow up study. I’m surprised that the follow up was never done considering the small dollar amount needed and the fact that the group was charging for their investigations.

Ahaha, nice one, guys. Listening to the bit about ghost hunters charging fees and causing property damage, I thought “Damage caused by a proton pack? C’mon lads, there’s an obvious Ghostbusters parallel in there, aren’t any of you fans enough to make a joke?” It was when Mike started talking about administering shocks to ESP test subjects that I paused to write this. I may have to rewind and pay closer attention now.

tellah :
Ghostbusters is a great example of pop culture that you could do a segment on. Typically, believers are heros while the skeptics are villains who just refuse to believe. See also: Straw Vulcan.

No way are the Ghost Busters heroes. They’re work is ethically questionable and they’re mavericks.

I knew I would have heard about these stories and had a moment of confusion while driving. “I totally missed this story?! Wait… something funny, what paper did they say?”

I try to reach back to original sources (especially if it’s the Daily Mail) to cite the story and we love to have corrections made. Wish more people would participate in digging at these stories, we get a lot of search traffic. It’s worthwhile to have a skeptical take on they hyped and mystery mongering stories.

Rebecca :
Looking at the Yellowduckmarine I can’t tell but in Dublin we have the Viking Splash Tour (http://www.vikingsplash.com/). The Dublin ones are actual WWII duck vehicles used in the Normandy landings (the instruction plans of theses ones arein French as they were given to the French army) – hence the “duckmarine” I would imagine?

We have something similar in Austin: http://austinducks.com/
And I always thought that it was something special and unique to our city.

tellah :
Ghostbusters is a great example of pop culture that you could do a segment on. Typically, believers are heros while the skeptics are villains who just refuse to believe. See also: Straw Vulcan.

No way are the Ghost Busters heroes. They’re work is ethically questionable and they’re mavericks.

FFS, it’s a movie and the poster was being facetious.

You’ll be complaining that ‘Mars Attacks’ and ‘Independence Day’ gave aliens a bad name next.